The Director and staff of the NYS Water Resources institute carry out numerous public
service activities each year. Most of
them are done in conjunction with multidisciplinary projects funded outside
of the Water Resources Research Act context. In order to cross-link the WRRA activities
in this program to many other NYS WRI activities, a small portion of WRRA resources
are devoted to information transfer and student training functions.

Information Transfer to and from New York State Entities

NYS
WRI staff participate in several New York State agency work groups and committees
related to water quality management. Some of these are:

· New York State Soil and Water Conservation Committee
- statutory body that oversees and funds certain activities by County Soil
and Water Conservation Districts. Among
many other functions, this body coordinates activities by New York's County
Water Quality Coordinating Committees that deliver several State water quality
management programs to municipalities and businesses.

· NYS Nonpoint Source Coordinating Committee - an
interagency committee of State and local government representatives who advise
about delivery of New York's nonpoint source management program through local
government. Since its founding, NYS
WRI has been a member of the steering committee of the body and NYS WRI staff
serve on several standing work groups.

· NYS DEC Water Management Advisory Committee - a
cross section of private and non-profit interest groups that advises the NYS
DEC Water Division about all programs within the Division, primarily related
to the Clean Water Act. NYS WRI originally
represented New York's higher education community when the committee was founded
and now co-represents with a colleague from the State University of New York
at Buffalo.

· New York State Health Department Safe Drinking
Water Advisory Committee - a body that advises this water supply regulatory
agency about all aspects of public water supply supervision under the Federal
Safe Drinking Water Act. This was reactivated in 1998.

Besides
presenting many opportunities to link university research work to agency staff,
the committees are invaluable means to ensure that NYS WRI's public service
projects and WRRA activities are as close as possible to New York's higher priority
water management needs.

WRRA
funds cover a portion of the travel, communication, and staff salary costs for
NYS WRI to participate in these committees.

Student Public Service Activities

Besides
the financial assistance to graduate and undergraduate students within projects,
NYS WRI interacts with students in several ways:

· NYS WRI routinely employs three to eight undergraduate
student assistants to work on projects. Project assignments balance project
needs with student career and academic interests. Most of NYS WRI's
student staff remain in environmental science fields or go on to graduate school
in such a field. One or two of these
students within a "vintage" are paid from WRRA funds to offset the
fact that none of NYS WRI's primary sponsors (typically regulatory and planning
programs of US EPA and New York State agencies) have student education as a
goal. The most successful recent student
activity was a 1998 demonstration of how county entities could perform Source
Water Assessments effectively and efficiently; four WRI student staff and
a
student from Juniata College in Pennsylvania performed all of the technical
work on four pilot assessments with coaching from County staff and water suppliers.

· NYS WRI staff create opportunities for Masters
level students in professional programs, such as the Master of Engineering Program
in Cornell's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, to perform public
service projects to help fulfill their curriculum requirements. The students typically work in teams of two
to four on a project topic negotiated among a NYS WRI governmental cooperator,
the student faculty advisor, and the students themselves. The government agency cooperator provides data
and acts as the "client" to whom the students report results. NYS WRI staff coach the students on project operation tactics, data interpretation,
diplomacy with the client, and other aspects that a realistic project requires. NYS covers incidental costs such as travel,
telephoning, and copying. Typically
these projects match with an activity NYS WRI staff are already performing for
a grant project with the governmental cooperator, so the students can take advantage
of the larger mass of related activity.

· In 1999 NYS WRI staff catalyzed a class project
analogous to the professional masters projects, with Cornell's Department of
Landscape Architecture. The students
performed an environmental land use design project for a municipality in the
New York City watershed. This is likely to be repeated in subsequent semesters.

WRRA funds cover salaries for one or two student interns, student project expenses,
communication and travel costs, and a small amount of NYS WRI staff salaries.